During the past decades, the prevalence of obesity has increased worldwide to epidemic proportion Approximately 1 billion of people worldwide are overweight or obese, conditions that increase mortality, mobility and economical costs. Obesity develops when energy intake is greater than energy expenditure, the excess energy being stored mainly as fat in adipose tissue. Body weight loss and prevention of weight gain can be achieved by reducing energy intake or bioavailability, increasing energy expenditure and/or reducing storage as fat. Obesity represents a serious threat to health because it is associated with an array of chronic diseases, including diabetes, atherosclerosis, degenerative disorders, airway diseases and some cancers.
Modifications of the intestinal flora were recently associated with obesity. These changes were demonstrated in obese mice to affect the metabolic potential of gut microbiota resulting in an increased capacity to harvest energy from the diet (Turnbaugh P J, Ley R E, Mahowald M A, Magrini V, Mardis E R, Gordon J I. An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest. Nature. 2006; Ley R E, Turnbaugh P J, Klein S, Gordon J l. Microbial ecology: human gut microbes associated with obesity. Nature. 2006). Such modifications of gut microbiota are proposed to contribute to the pathophysiology of obesity. Probiotics, the beneficial bacteria present in food or food supplements, are known to modify the intestinal microbiota (Fuller R & Gibson G R. Modification of the intestinal microflora using probiotics and prebiotics. Scand J. Gastroenterol. 1997).
WO2006019222 discloses the Lactobacillus rhamnosus Strain PL60 KCCM-10654P with a body-fat reducing activity that overproduces t10c12-octadecadienoic acid. However the overproduction of t10c12-octadecadienoic acid might be problematic for patients that react sensitively on t10c12-octadecadienoic acid.